World Creativity Summit 2008
Taipei, Taiwan June 5th – 8th 2008.
Hosted by InSEA and the Taiwan Association of Arts Education
1. Background and context
UNESCO held its first World Congress on Arts Education in Lisbon in March 2006. A key element of that Congress was the announcement of a Joint Declaration between the International Drama/Theatre and Education Association (IDEA), the International Society for Music Education (ISME), and the International Society for Education through the Arts (InSEA) to work together and to launch the World Alliance for Arts Education (WAAE). The Joint Declaration included the statements:
We have united to define an integrated strategy that responds to a critical moment in human history: social fragmentation, a dominant global culture of competition, endemic urban and ecological violence, and the marginalization of key educational and cultural languages of transformation.
We believe that today’s knowledge-based, post-industrial societies require citizens with confident flexible intelligences, creative verbal and non-verbal communication skills, abilities to think critically and imaginatively, intercultural understandings and an empathetic commitment to cultural diversity.
For more than half a century, our associations have contributed significantly to the development of curricula and teaching approaches. We are now ready to respond proactively to the diverse social and cultural needs of our world…to collaborate with all governments, networks, institutions, communities and individuals who share our vision.
In 2007, IDEA and the Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture co-hosted the 2007 World Creativity Summit which brought together outstanding innovators from the realms of education, arts, science, politics and policy-making, trade, industry and journalism through to launch discussions about innovative strategies and partnerships to advocate creative pedagogies for the 21st Century.
The 2008 World Creativity Summit completes the first biennial summit organized every two years by the WAAE as an instrument for developing its strategic research, networking and advocacy world projects.
2. General Objectives
The guiding aims of the 2008 World Creativity Summit are:
1. To design and launch a sustainable and effective biennial World Creativity Summit;
2. To understand the relationships between human creativity and the cultivation of knowledge-based societies built upon the practice of sustainable development, global solidarity, cooperation and human rights.
3. To stimulate and develop strategic partnerships and international projects which influence how civil societies and their governments throughout the world understand and create such a future.
3. Specific Objectives
These aims are focussed through five specific objectives:
1. To explore concepts of creativity in the fields of the arts, sciences, education, industry and policy-making;
2. To explore the relationships between creative arts, arts education and public policy, with particular focus on the education of arts teachers and the institutionalization of creative pedagogies of transformation;
3. To explore the socio-economic and cultural potentials of the creative arts and arts education from both local, regional and global perspectives;
4. To establish working groups on Research, Networking and Advocacy to design a plan of action to be implemented as WAAE projects for the period of 2008-2010;
5. To introduce the members of a WAAE Board comprised of representatives from its four world-members (IDEA, ISME, InSEA and WDA) who will liaise with emerging partners to develop a funded World Alliance secretariat and office.
4. Summit methodology
The 2008 Summit aims to deepen the processes launched and developed during the 2007 WCS to build three strategic projects to respond to the challenges that need to be faced in building new creative pedagogies for the 21st Century. Based on participants’ responses to the innovative formats of ‘storytelling circles’, ‘public dialogues’ and ‘strategic roundtable focus groups’ developed for the 2007 WCS, the Presidential Council of the WAAE has advanced its methodology to ensure as informal, creative and productive a working meeting as possible.
InSEA, IDEA, ISME and the WDA will each present a dynamic dialogic keynote which shares its current thinking on the relationship between creativity, culture, arts education and sustainable global development for the 21st Century. All Summit participants will then be invited to pose questions in response. The following day, there will be three further dialogic keynotes by experts from civil society interested in forming industrial, media-based and policy-making partnerships with the WAAE.
You do not need to have participated in the 2007 WCS to be eligible to participate in the Summit. The dialogues stimulated by the WAAE world-members and emerging partners will create lenses through which three Working Groups on Research, Networking and Advocacy will develop a two year strategic plan of action and structure.
5. Summit preparation and timeline
All those who are interested in participating in the 2008 WCS are invited to submit a relevant biography of to 200 words and define the Working Group they would like to join, by February 29th.
Participants will be informed if they have been selected to participate in the Summit by March 9th.
All participants will then have until March 30th to submit a 200 word synopsis of the proposal they wish to contribute to the roundtable discussion of the working group of their choice.
The WAAE will produce a pre-Summit publication which will include these synopses, and publish the keynotes, participants’ synopses and outcomes of the Summit on its website: www.worldcreativitysummit.org.
6. Participation, Representativity and Support
IDEA, InSEA, ISME and the World Dance Alliance will each be asked to invite up to 20 of their members, and up to 20 emerging partners from the worlds of industry, politics, media and research into education and creativity. A new criterion for the participation in this 2008 World Creativity Summit is a commitment to join a Working Group on Advocacy, Research or Networking for two years, until the next Summit in 2010.
A WCS Selection Committee will study all proposals to ensure as broad a representation of arts-education and civil society as possible within the Summit and the WAAE working groups. The WAAE will confirm your participation by March 9th; the final 2008 Summit programme will be available from May 1st.
7. Official Language
The official language of this Summit is English. A bilingual programme will be available in English and Chinese.
8. Location
The Summit will be held in the Taipei Museum of Fine Art and the Institute of the Arts in Taiwan Normal University. Both have outstanding conference resources for the 120 Summit participants, are secure and well-located for accommodation and restaurants.
9. Further Information and Inquiries
The host of the 2008 WCS Summit and its co-organizers can be reached via the following emails and website addresses:
InSEA: www.insea.org
IDEA: www.idea-org.net
ISME: www.isme.org
All inquiries and responses to the WAAE invitation should be directed to the 2008 WCS Secretariat:
Joanna Rees (International Secretariat): Email: reesjoanna@hotmail.com Phone: 886 – 955974754 / 886-2-225-16730
Sandrine Han (Taiwan Secretariat): Email: sandrinehan@gmail.com